Data without interpretation are useless, interpretation without data is dangerous. More on "non replaceable" energy

 

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before the defeat," Sun Tzu. (Image created with Dezgo.com)

I am always amazed by how people tend to see the world in terms of "self-evident" statements which the don't see as requiring demonstration, quantification, or verification. It is like if they were rewriting the American Declaration of Independence (We hold these truths to be self-evident...). But whereas things such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are hard to quantify, when you deal with physical entities such as renewable energy, then quantification is not only possible, but vital. 

On this point, Sun Tzu would have said that interpretation without quantification is dangerous because by dismissing renewable technologies you are disbanding your best troops without giving them a chance to prove their mettle in a real confrontation. 

Here, as an example, a recent post by Tim Morgan where we read a long discussion, interesting in many respects, but completely disconnected from real-world data. 

This is where the term “renewable” ought to be subjected to far more critical examination than it has tended to receive so far. We can’t source the plastics required for the renewables sector without hydrocarbon feedstocks. Renewables can’t, of themselves, power the extraction, processing and delivery of the vast amounts of concrete, steel, copper, cobalt, lithium and a host of other resources required for the development, maintenance and eventual replacement of wind and solar power.

In short, “renewables” would merit that label only if they were capable of renewing – that is to say, replacing – themselves over time. This isn’t possible now, and there are few reasons to suppose that it will become so in the future.

Morgan is not the only one who keeps repeating the mantra that renewables are unable to replace themselves without worrying too much about justifying his statement, something that would require, at minimum, demonstrating that the energy yield of renewable technology is too low for this purpose. But there is no attempt to do that in the post. 

Eventually, it doesn't matter what intellectuals are saying; the real world is moving along the path created by physics. The lines are drawn for a battle that's going to be fought over the carrion of the fossil fuel industry. Victory will go to those who can follow Sun Tzu's statement that “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” And onward we'll go! 

(For a quantification of the capability of renewables to expand and replace themselves, see these references: 

100% Renewable Energy Transition by Kemfelt, Breyer, and Oei. 2020

On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research, Breyer et al, 2022

Rethinking Energy 2020-2030, Dorr and Seba, 2022

The sower's way: quantifying the narrowing net-energy pathways to a global energy transition, Sgoruirdis, Csala, and Bardi, 2016

Energy Return on Investment of Major Energy Carriers: Review and Harmonization, Murphy et al., 2022

And many more....)